Vadym Kholodenko

Piano

Vadym Kholodenko was born in 1986 in Kiev. In 1994, he decided to become the first musician in his family. He began his studies at Kiev’s Mykola Lysenko Special School of Music under Natalia Grydneva and Borys Fedorov. Kholodenko made his first appearances in the United States, China, Hungary and Croatia at the age of thirteen. In 2005, he moved to Moscow to study at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire under Vera Gornostayeva. He won top prizes at the International Maria Callas Grand Prix in Piano (2004, Athens, Grand Prix), the Sendai International Music Competition (2010, 1st prize), and the International Schubert Competition (2011, 1st prize). Winner of the coveted Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2013; afterwards Kholodenko embarked on a big international tour throughout the Unites States, Europe, and Asia.

Internationally he has performed with the orchestras of BBC Scotland, Kristiansand, Malmö, Qatar, Norwegian Radio and Sydney. Kholodenko has collaborated with distinguished conductors including Leonard Slatkin, Miguel Harth-Bedoya, Yuri Bashmet, Carl St. Clair, Vladimir Spivakov, and Vladimir Fedoseyev. He appeared in recitals in Paris, Lucerne, Singapore, Budapest and Porto in addition to performing throughout Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

A committed chamber musician, Kholodenko took home the 2013 Van Cliburn prize for Best Performance of a Piano Quintet. He performed stunning cadenzas in Mozart’s Concerto No. 21, composed by him for the competition, to the delight of the jury and the audience. He has also collaborated with the Enso String Quartet, violinists Vadim Repin and Alena Baeva, as well as cellist Alexandre Bouzlov.

Kholodenko’s first recording for Harmonia Mundi was released in 2013, featuring three fragments of Stravinsky’s Pétrouchka and the complete Liszt’s Transcendental Études. Kholodenko’s solo disc, featuring music of Balakirev, Tchaikovsky, Kurbatov, and Chaplygin, was released by the Melodiya label in 2015. The year 2017 saw the release of a concert recording of works by Hindemith, Berg, and Wolff in collaboration with the Melodiya label and Apriori Arts Agency. The musician’s discography also includes discs with Grieg’s, Saint-Saëns', and Prokofiev’s piano concertos. Information for November 2018